The present invention relates to an improvement in the adjustment of the straps of a backpack. Specifically, most conventional backpacks have a pair of shoulder pads which bear the weight of the backpack and a pair of stabilizing straps interlinked with the shoulder pads that allows a user to adjust the load closer to or further away from the backpacker's body.
In the past, innovations within the adjustable straps of backpacks have largely been confined to aesthetic design changes. For example, currently, a popular change in the form of the shoulder pads is a change in the shape of the pad which is curved to an S-shape. Such a modification does little or nothing to improve the operating characteristics of the backpack to make it more comfortable or easier-to-use for the backpacker.
One problem with backpacks currently on the market is that they all have interlinked shoulder pad straps and stabilizing straps. This causes the adjustment of one of the pairs of straps to affect the adjustment of the other pair of straps. Often, when hiking over a long distance, the hiker will want to adjust the load by adjusting one or the other set of straps. Unfortunately when he/she attempts to adjust one of the sets of straps, the other set of straps goes out of adjustment. This problem is even more compounded when the second set of straps is counter-adjusted back to their original position, because the counter-adjustment will subsequently move the originally adjusted straps out of position. Hence, a backpacker that wishes to simply make one adjustment to his/her backpack will have to make several adjustments of the shoulder and stabilizing straps. Ultimately, a backpacker must learn to overcompensate on the adjustment of the first pair of straps, so that only one adjustment of the second pair of straps is needed.
The present invention resolves this multiple adjustment problem by making the shoulder and stabilizing straps independently adjustable.